If their exit is a sign of a larger realignment at the paper under its new editor, Colin Myler, who replaced outgoing editor Kevin Convey at the beginning of the year, then it is a very slow-moving realignment.

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It's a puzzling move, too: Zambito and Grace have been reporting some important local crime stories from their perches in the courthouses, from the cop Michael Pena, who was recently controversially acquitted on a rape charge; to the developing courthouse saga of accused East Side madam Anna Gristina.

Perhaps Myler has some Fleet Street firepower he wants to bring to the competition on those stories with the Post? Myler is the editor who lost his job as editor of the now-defunct Rupert Murdoch British tabloid The News of the World when Murdoch shut it down in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that had embroiled the paper in a massive public controversy in the U.K.

Jennifer Mauer, spokesperson for the News, said the paper does not comment on personnel matters.